Dan Boff AP Notecard The Great Gatsby Title/Author- The Great Gatsby,F. Scott Fitzgerald
Setting- New York/ Long Island (East Egg, West Egg, Valley of Ashes) 1922
Characters- Nick- Narrator quiet, reserved secondary to Gatsby, Gatsby- A rich famous bootlegger who throws wild parties to impress Daisy, Daisy-Nick’s cousin rich, socialite, married to Tom, Tom-arrogant, rich and privileged, met Nick at Yale, Jordan- Nicks love interest, beautiful, but dishonest, Myrtle-Tom’s mistress who lives in the Valley of Ashes, Wilson-Myrtle’s husband, OwlEyes- Strange drunk that attends Gatsby’s parties
Plot Summary- Nick moves to New York to learn the bond business. He ends up living in a rich, but unfashionable neighborhood of Long Island called West Egg. He lives next door to a huge mansion, whose owner Gatsby throws huge parties on Saturday nights. Nick sees Gatsby standing out by the sound looking across it towards a green light (Daisy’s house.) One day, Nick is invited to Tom and Daisy’s house in West Egg for dinner. There he meets Jordan, and discovers that Tom has a mistress in New York. A few weeks later, Tom invites Nick to go into the city with him and meet Myrtle. They end up going to a drunken party with Myrtle and her sister. Nick eventually gets invited to one of Gatsby’s parties and meets Jordan there. They begin a romantic relationship. When Nick meets Gatsby he discovers that he has been thrown these parties in hopes of meeting Daisy, who he fell in love with while he was a soldier. Nick agrees to set up a meeting between them. After an awkward meeting, Daisy and Gatsby begin an affair. Tom begins growing suspicious of his wife. At a lunch party Tom sees Gatsby staring intently at Daisy and realizes they are in love. After much arguing, the party agrees to drive to New York where Tom confronts Gatsby, and accuses him of participating in illegal activities. Daisy decides that she will leave Gatsby and remain with Tom. Tom sends Daisy to drive home with Gatsby. Nick, Jordan and Tom drive threw the Valley of Ashes and discover that Daisy (driving Gatsby’s car) has hit Myrtle with his car and killed her. Gatsby decides to take the blame for Daisy. Tom tells Wilson that Gatsby was the driver of the car. Wilson jumps to the conclusion that Gatsby was Myrtle’s mistress kills Gatsby, and then himself. Nick holds a funeral for Gatsby, breaks up with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest.
Key Words, Devices, Ect.- The Green Light-Gatsby stares at the light on Daisy’s dock. It comes to represent his love and desire for Daisy. Nick remarks that once Gatsby and Daisy begin their relationship, the light loses all significance, TJ Eckleburg- A huge of a set of eyes and glasses on a billboard over the Valley of Ashes comes to represent God judgmentally watching over the characters, The Valley of Ashes-The town between East and West Egg was used as a dumping zone for industrial ashes. It comes to represent the dirt and decay of the 1920s, East Egg/ West Egg- The East Egg is the area of Long Island where the aristocracy live it is more fashionable then West Egg where the newly rich live. This is shown through the characters that live in the towns (Gatsby lives in West Egg, Tom lives in East Egg), Weather- Fitzgerald uses weather as foreshadowing: he describes there being a chill in the air when Gatsby dies, Tom and Gatsby’s confrontation is on the hottest day of the year. Imagery- Fitzgerald uses realistic description and imagery throughout the novel. Themes- the people who are truly great make themselves great, The American Dream is corrupted, The 1920s are an era of social and moral decay, Living in the upper class is hollow Critical Analysis
All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'
Anyone who has read The Great Gatsby is forced to question the title of the book. The eponymous hero of the novel, we soon discover, is a liar and a criminal. He is arguably neither 'great' nor, indeed, 'Gatsby' but is, in reality, James Gatz, the son of 'shiftless and unsuccessful farm people' from North Dakota (p. 105). Although he is initially presented as a rather enigmatic character, whose entrance in Chapter 3 is preceded by various contrasting snippets of gossip about his past, the narrator Nick Carraway eventually learns the truth of James Gatz's history and reveals it to the reader in Chapter 6. But even before we are told that Gatsby is not all he seems to be, there are enough hints and clues to make the reader suspicious. For example, the stories that surround Gatsby are rather sinister--he killed a man, he was a German spy--and Gatsby's association with Meyer Wolfshiem causes Nick concern, especially when it is revealed that Wolfshiem is a gambler who 'fixed the World's Series' (p. 79). The big revelation that Gatsby is not who he seems comes as no real surprise; what is more confusing is why Nick still sees Gatsby as 'great' and chooses to name the book after him. What, we are impelled to ask, makesGatsby so great? Gatsby's background Gatsby seems to exemplify a particular ideal for Nick, and it is certainly possible to read Gatsby as a kind of doppelganger who embodies all that Nick would like to be. The two men are fairly similar: Nick describes Gatsby as 'a man of about my age' and both of them, it turns out, have moved to New York from the Midwest (p. 53). Interestingly, both men also seem to be the victims of insufficient or thwarted inheritances which means that, unlike Tom and Daisy (whose extravagant lifestyle is supported by their inherited wealth), they are both forced to work for their living. Although Nick tells us that his family owns and still runs a 'wholesale hardware business', the family wealth is clearly in decline, as we are informed that Nick's father will only support him for one year while he attempts to establish himself in New York (pp. 8-9).
Typically, Gatsby's story is a little more complicated, in that the inheritance he was due to receive (not from his real father but from Dan Cody) was stolen from him by Cody's mistress, Ella Kaye. Nevertheless, Gatsby's 'singularly appropriate education', which he also received from Cody, has ensured that while the 30-year-old Nick is working to support himself in the bonds business, Gatsby has, at roughly the same age, already secured his own wealth through his criminal activities and associations (p. 107). Gatsby demonstrates to Nick that it is possible for a young man (even a 'Mr Nobody from Nowhere' like him) to make his fortune, and thus Gatsby performs a similar function for Nick as Dan Cody did for him (p. 136). It is possible, then, that Nick identifies with and admires Gatsby and wants to believe in the possibility of a man with little or no inheritance (like Gatsby and himself) becoming wealthy and successful in America.
The San Francisco lie Gatsby is a self-made man--a social climber who has reinvented himself and who embodies the American ideal of democracy. In a country where, according to the Declaration of Independence, 'all men are created equal', Gatsby attempts to prove that anyone can achieve 'greatness'. However, as Gatsby seems to realise, it is not that simple, and money alone does not bring with it the same status as inherited wealth. That is why Gatsby cannot remain as James Gatz, the son of unsuccessful farmers, and has to become Jay Gatsby. The back-story that Gatsby creates for himself, at least the version that he tells to Nick, closely echoes Nick's own past. Nick's family, we are told, 'have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch' (p. 8). Gatsby also insists that he is 'the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It's a family tradition' (p. 71). Gatsby clearly talks the talk as he creates for himself a family history that, like Nick's, goes back several generations and has its own 'traditions'.
Nevertheless, despite (or perhaps because of) the similarities to his own story, Nick remains suspicious that Gatsby is lying, and their conversation becomes much more complicated when Nick asks what part of the Midwest Gatsby is from. Gatsby replies that he is from San Francisco, to which Nick's response is a simple 'I see' (p. 71). What is surprising about this exchange is not so much that San Francisco is not a Midwestern city, but that Nick offers little reaction to Gatsby's blatantly obvious 'mistake'. Even if he were not from the Midwest himself, anyone with a basic knowledge of American geography would know that San Francisco is on America's west coast. Indeed, it seems impossible that Gatsby (also from the Midwest) would not realise it too. So why does he tell such an obvious lie, and why does Nick let it pass without comment? The only plausible explanation is that Gatsby wants Nick to know that he's lying, to show Nick that 'Gatsby' is a fictional creation. Nick's response of 'I see' implies that he is aware of the lie (he 'sees' the truth), but the fact that he neither challenges Gatsby nor points out the lie to the reader suggests that Nick chooses to be complicit with Gatsby's lies.
This unchallenged lie clearly has implications for the rest of the book, which tells Gatsby's story entirely from Nick's perspective. It seems clear from the San Francisco incident that Nick is not interested in exposing the real Gatsby. We are told in the first few pages that Nick enjoyed a brief period as an editor for the Yale News, and it seems that Nick's inclination towards editing may well extend to his account ofGatsby too. Nick wants to portray Gatsby as 'great' and to ignore or edit anything that might undermine that image. Indeed, towards the end of the novel, after Gatsby's death, Nick returns to his mansion to find 'an obscene word' scrawled on the step. Nick's reaction is to erase it, removing the word from the story as well as the step by not revealing it to the reader. As the story progresses, then, Nick's version seems increasingly unreliable as be glosses over lies, erases criticisms of Gatsby and avoids uncomfortable truths.
The threat of 'Mr Nobody'
It takes Tom, who bothers to investigate Gatsby's past, to reveal him as a liar and a criminal. Tom, it seems, is not impressed by Gatsby's ability to make his own fortune and is certainly less inclined than Nick to allow Gatsby to lie. From his initial meeting with Gatsby, Tom suspects that, like many people with 'new money', Gatsby is a 'big bootlegger' and, unlike Nick, he is unwilling to allow him to become part of their social circle (p. 115). Tom is clearly angered and threatened by Gatsby's attempts to persuade Daisy to leave him, but Tom is also in a very different position from Nick, and is unlikely to embrace the idea that 'all men are equal'. As a member of the elite East Egg community, Tom would be unlikely to want to be 'equal' to those who do not have the same good breeding and inherited money. He therefore resents Gatsby's efforts to infiltrate the upper classes because, if 'Mr Nobody' can do it, anyone can.
Tom has to protect his privileged position from the threat of 'new money' and he does so by destroying Gatsby, both literally and metaphorically. Tom's revelation of Gatsby's true origins signals the beginning of the end for him, and soon after the scene in the hotelGatsby is killed by Wilson, who mistakenly believes that he was responsible for Myrtle's death. It is no coincidence that Tom is the one who makes sure Wilson has the wrong culprit, effectively ensuring that Gatsby will no longer be a threat to his status or his marriage.
Behind the scenes
Although Gatsby constructs a fake history to tell to his party guests, the San Francisco lie suggests that he wants Nick to see the truth behind his theatrical performance. There is certainly something of the showman about Gatsby, and the appellation 'Great' brings to mind a ringmaster, magician or renowned performer. His house, too, seems to be a kind of stage or set that is arranged so perfectly that even the moon appears to Nick to have been 'produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket' (p. 49). And Nick is not the only one who gets the sense that Gatsby's house has a certain air of unreality about it: the owl-eyed man that Nick meets at Gatsby's party is hugely surprised to find that the books in the library are not, as he had suspected, 'a nice durable cardboard', but real books. The owl-eyed man is so impressed by Gatsby's 'realism' that he likens him to David Belasco, the famous Broadway producer of the time, suggesting that even though the books are real, they are merely part of an intricate Broadway set (p. 52).
The house and the parties, therefore, seem to function as the proper setting for the 'Great Gatsby' to act out the role of the millionaire as he shows off his wealth to his more 'fashionable' East Egg neighbours, including Tom and Daisy (p. 11). However, what Gatsby's San Francisco lie does is to allow Nick to see behind the scenes, to see that 'Gatsby' is a role with a more or less convincing back-story and with a set on which to perform. Gatsby knows that Nick is Daisy's cousin, but it is also clear to him that Nick is not as wealthy as she is, and he even goes so far as to observe that Nick 'don't make much money' (p. 89). Gatsby recognises a kindred spirit, and his lie serves both to test the extent of Nick's potential complicity with his plan to marry Daisy, and to demonstrate the reality that social transition comes at a price, even in what is supposedly the 'land of the free'. Gatsby shows Nick that, in order to become rich and to place himself in a position to marry Daisy, he has had to change his identity, alter his history and create a show of his wealth. While Nick seems to want to believe in the democratic ideal that anyone can make it in America, Gatsby shows his friend that the mythic 'American Dream' is actually impossible to achieve--he knows that a farm boy cannot become a member of the social elite, but he hopes that the Oxford-educated Jay Gatsby can achieve James Gatz's dream.
Conclusion
On the surface, Gatsby's story seems to show that it is possible for a 'Mr Nobody' to achieve the 'American Dream' of social transformation: a farm boy from the Midwest is able to become the Great Gatsby, the millionaire host of fashionable New York parties. However, while the wealthy classes will take advantage of his hospitality, those like Tom who have 'proper' breeding and inherited money will not tolerate his more serious efforts to enter their exclusive class. To return to the original question--what makes Gatsby 'great' for Nick?--it is that he believes the myth of the American Dream. Nevertheless, it is only Nick (whose inherited wealth is on the decline and who identifies with Gatsby's desire to improve his social standing) who wants to believe that such a transformation as Gatsby's is possible. For the other characters like Daisy, Tom and the guests at Gatsby's parties, all men are certainly not created equal and there is no means by which the scales might subsequently be balanced. Even in America, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, society is strictly ordered, and for the elite to retain their exclusive position at the top of the hierarchy, those below them must also remain in their proper place.
Stocks, Claire. "'All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'." The English Review Feb. 2007: 9+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.
AP Notecard
The Great Gatsby
Title/Author- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Setting- New York/ Long Island (East Egg, West Egg, Valley of Ashes) 1922
Characters- Nick- Narrator quiet, reserved secondary to Gatsby, Gatsby- A rich famous bootlegger who throws wild parties to impress Daisy, Daisy- Nick’s cousin rich, socialite, married to Tom, Tom- arrogant, rich and privileged, met Nick at Yale, Jordan- Nicks love interest, beautiful, but dishonest, Myrtle- Tom’s mistress who lives in the Valley of Ashes, Wilson- Myrtle’s husband, Owl Eyes- Strange drunk that attends Gatsby’s parties
Plot Summary- Nick moves to New York to learn the bond business. He ends up living in a rich, but unfashionable neighborhood of Long Island called West Egg. He lives next door to a huge mansion, whose owner Gatsby throws huge parties on Saturday nights. Nick sees Gatsby standing out by the sound looking across it towards a green light (Daisy’s house.) One day, Nick is invited to Tom and Daisy’s house in West Egg for dinner. There he meets Jordan, and discovers that Tom has a mistress in New York. A few weeks later, Tom invites Nick to go into the city with him and meet Myrtle. They end up going to a drunken party with Myrtle and her sister. Nick eventually gets invited to one of Gatsby’s parties and meets Jordan there. They begin a romantic relationship. When Nick meets Gatsby he discovers that he has been thrown these parties in hopes of meeting Daisy, who he fell in love with while he was a soldier. Nick agrees to set up a meeting between them. After an awkward meeting, Daisy and Gatsby begin an affair. Tom begins growing suspicious of his wife. At a lunch party Tom sees Gatsby staring intently at Daisy and realizes they are in love. After much arguing, the party agrees to drive to New York where Tom confronts Gatsby, and accuses him of participating in illegal activities. Daisy decides that she will leave Gatsby and remain with Tom. Tom sends Daisy to drive home with Gatsby. Nick, Jordan and Tom drive threw the Valley of Ashes and discover that Daisy (driving Gatsby’s car) has hit Myrtle with his car and killed her. Gatsby decides to take the blame for Daisy. Tom tells Wilson that Gatsby was the driver of the car. Wilson jumps to the conclusion that Gatsby was Myrtle’s mistress kills Gatsby, and then himself. Nick holds a funeral for Gatsby, breaks up with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest.
Key Words, Devices, Ect.- The Green Light- Gatsby stares at the light on Daisy’s dock. It comes to represent his love and desire for Daisy. Nick remarks that once Gatsby and Daisy begin their relationship, the light loses all significance, TJ Eckleburg- A huge of a set of eyes and glasses on a billboard over the Valley of Ashes comes to represent God judgmentally watching over the characters, The Valley of Ashes- The town between East and West Egg was used as a dumping zone for industrial ashes. It comes to represent the dirt and decay of the 1920s, East Egg/ West Egg- The East Egg is the area of Long Island where the aristocracy live it is more fashionable then West Egg where the newly rich live. This is shown through the characters that live in the towns (Gatsby lives in West Egg, Tom lives in East Egg), Weather- Fitzgerald uses weather as foreshadowing: he describes there being a chill in the air when Gatsby dies, Tom and Gatsby’s confrontation is on the hottest day of the year. Imagery- Fitzgerald uses realistic description and imagery throughout the novel.
Themes- the people who are truly great make themselves great, The American Dream is corrupted, The 1920s are an era of social and moral decay, Living in the upper class is hollow
Critical Analysis
All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'
Anyone who has read The Great Gatsby is forced to question the title of the book. The eponymous hero of the novel, we soon discover, is a liar and a criminal. He is arguably neither 'great' nor, indeed, 'Gatsby' but is, in reality, James Gatz, the son of 'shiftless and unsuccessful farm people' from North Dakota (p. 105). Although he is initially presented as a rather enigmatic character, whose entrance in Chapter 3 is preceded by various contrasting snippets of gossip about his past, the narrator Nick Carraway eventually learns the truth of James Gatz's history and reveals it to the reader in Chapter 6. But even before we are told that Gatsby is not all he seems to be, there are enough hints and clues to make the reader suspicious. For example, the stories that surround Gatsby are rather sinister--he killed a man, he was a German spy--and Gatsby's association with Meyer Wolfshiem causes Nick concern, especially when it is revealed that Wolfshiem is a gambler who 'fixed the World's Series' (p. 79). The big revelation that Gatsby is not who he seems comes as no real surprise; what is more confusing is why Nick still sees Gatsby as 'great' and chooses to name the book after him. What, we are impelled to ask, makesGatsby so great?
Gatsby's background
Gatsby seems to exemplify a particular ideal for Nick, and it is certainly possible to read Gatsby as a kind of doppelganger who embodies all that Nick would like to be. The two men are fairly similar: Nick describes Gatsby as 'a man of about my age' and both of them, it turns out, have moved to New York from the Midwest (p. 53). Interestingly, both men also seem to be the victims of insufficient or thwarted inheritances which means that, unlike Tom and Daisy (whose extravagant lifestyle is supported by their inherited wealth), they are both forced to work for their living. Although Nick tells us that his family owns and still runs a 'wholesale hardware business', the family wealth is clearly in decline, as we are informed that Nick's father will only support him for one year while he attempts to establish himself in New York (pp. 8-9).
Typically, Gatsby's story is a little more complicated, in that the inheritance he was due to receive (not from his real father but from Dan Cody) was stolen from him by Cody's mistress, Ella Kaye. Nevertheless, Gatsby's 'singularly appropriate education', which he also received from Cody, has ensured that while the 30-year-old Nick is working to support himself in the bonds business, Gatsby has, at roughly the same age, already secured his own wealth through his criminal activities and associations (p. 107). Gatsby demonstrates to Nick that it is possible for a young man (even a 'Mr Nobody from Nowhere' like him) to make his fortune, and thus Gatsby performs a similar function for Nick as Dan Cody did for him (p. 136). It is possible, then, that Nick identifies with and admires Gatsby and wants to believe in the possibility of a man with little or no inheritance (like Gatsby and himself) becoming wealthy and successful in America.
The San Francisco lie
Gatsby is a self-made man--a social climber who has reinvented himself and who embodies the American ideal of democracy. In a country where, according to the Declaration of Independence, 'all men are created equal', Gatsby attempts to prove that anyone can achieve 'greatness'. However, as Gatsby seems to realise, it is not that simple, and money alone does not bring with it the same status as inherited wealth. That is why Gatsby cannot remain as James Gatz, the son of unsuccessful farmers, and has to become Jay Gatsby. The back-story that Gatsby creates for himself, at least the version that he tells to Nick, closely echoes Nick's own past. Nick's family, we are told, 'have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch' (p. 8). Gatsby also insists that he is 'the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It's a family tradition' (p. 71). Gatsby clearly talks the talk as he creates for himself a family history that, like Nick's, goes back several generations and has its own 'traditions'.
Nevertheless, despite (or perhaps because of) the similarities to his own story, Nick remains suspicious that Gatsby is lying, and their conversation becomes much more complicated when Nick asks what part of the Midwest Gatsby is from. Gatsby replies that he is from San Francisco, to which Nick's response is a simple 'I see' (p. 71). What is surprising about this exchange is not so much that San Francisco is not a Midwestern city, but that Nick offers little reaction to Gatsby's blatantly obvious 'mistake'. Even if he were not from the Midwest himself, anyone with a basic knowledge of American geography would know that San Francisco is on America's west coast. Indeed, it seems impossible that Gatsby (also from the Midwest) would not realise it too. So why does he tell such an obvious lie, and why does Nick let it pass without comment? The only plausible explanation is that Gatsby wants Nick to know that he's lying, to show Nick that 'Gatsby' is a fictional creation. Nick's response of 'I see' implies that he is aware of the lie (he 'sees' the truth), but the fact that he neither challenges Gatsby nor points out the lie to the reader suggests that Nick chooses to be complicit with Gatsby's lies.
This unchallenged lie clearly has implications for the rest of the book, which tells Gatsby's story entirely from Nick's perspective. It seems clear from the San Francisco incident that Nick is not interested in exposing the real Gatsby. We are told in the first few pages that Nick enjoyed a brief period as an editor for the Yale News, and it seems that Nick's inclination towards editing may well extend to his account ofGatsby too. Nick wants to portray Gatsby as 'great' and to ignore or edit anything that might undermine that image. Indeed, towards the end of the novel, after Gatsby's death, Nick returns to his mansion to find 'an obscene word' scrawled on the step. Nick's reaction is to erase it, removing the word from the story as well as the step by not revealing it to the reader. As the story progresses, then, Nick's version seems increasingly unreliable as be glosses over lies, erases criticisms of Gatsby and avoids uncomfortable truths.
The threat of 'Mr Nobody'
It takes Tom, who bothers to investigate Gatsby's past, to reveal him as a liar and a criminal. Tom, it seems, is not impressed by Gatsby's ability to make his own fortune and is certainly less inclined than Nick to allow Gatsby to lie. From his initial meeting with Gatsby, Tom suspects that, like many people with 'new money', Gatsby is a 'big bootlegger' and, unlike Nick, he is unwilling to allow him to become part of their social circle (p. 115). Tom is clearly angered and threatened by Gatsby's attempts to persuade Daisy to leave him, but Tom is also in a very different position from Nick, and is unlikely to embrace the idea that 'all men are equal'. As a member of the elite East Egg community, Tom would be unlikely to want to be 'equal' to those who do not have the same good breeding and inherited money. He therefore resents Gatsby's efforts to infiltrate the upper classes because, if 'Mr Nobody' can do it, anyone can.
Tom has to protect his privileged position from the threat of 'new money' and he does so by destroying Gatsby, both literally and metaphorically. Tom's revelation of Gatsby's true origins signals the beginning of the end for him, and soon after the scene in the hotelGatsby is killed by Wilson, who mistakenly believes that he was responsible for Myrtle's death. It is no coincidence that Tom is the one who makes sure Wilson has the wrong culprit, effectively ensuring that Gatsby will no longer be a threat to his status or his marriage.
Behind the scenes
Although Gatsby constructs a fake history to tell to his party guests, the San Francisco lie suggests that he wants Nick to see the truth behind his theatrical performance. There is certainly something of the showman about Gatsby, and the appellation 'Great' brings to mind a ringmaster, magician or renowned performer. His house, too, seems to be a kind of stage or set that is arranged so perfectly that even the moon appears to Nick to have been 'produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket' (p. 49). And Nick is not the only one who gets the sense that Gatsby's house has a certain air of unreality about it: the owl-eyed man that Nick meets at Gatsby's party is hugely surprised to find that the books in the library are not, as he had suspected, 'a nice durable cardboard', but real books. The owl-eyed man is so impressed by Gatsby's 'realism' that he likens him to David Belasco, the famous Broadway producer of the time, suggesting that even though the books are real, they are merely part of an intricate Broadway set (p. 52).
The house and the parties, therefore, seem to function as the proper setting for the 'Great Gatsby' to act out the role of the millionaire as he shows off his wealth to his more 'fashionable' East Egg neighbours, including Tom and Daisy (p. 11). However, what Gatsby's San Francisco lie does is to allow Nick to see behind the scenes, to see that 'Gatsby' is a role with a more or less convincing back-story and with a set on which to perform.
Gatsby knows that Nick is Daisy's cousin, but it is also clear to him that Nick is not as wealthy as she is, and he even goes so far as to observe that Nick 'don't make much money' (p. 89). Gatsby recognises a kindred spirit, and his lie serves both to test the extent of Nick's potential complicity with his plan to marry Daisy, and to demonstrate the reality that social transition comes at a price, even in what is supposedly the 'land of the free'. Gatsby shows Nick that, in order to become rich and to place himself in a position to marry Daisy, he has had to change his identity, alter his history and create a show of his wealth. While Nick seems to want to believe in the democratic ideal that anyone can make it in America, Gatsby shows his friend that the mythic 'American Dream' is actually impossible to achieve--he knows that a farm boy cannot become a member of the social elite, but he hopes that the Oxford-educated Jay Gatsby can achieve James Gatz's dream.
Conclusion
On the surface, Gatsby's story seems to show that it is possible for a 'Mr Nobody' to achieve the 'American Dream' of social transformation: a farm boy from the Midwest is able to become the Great Gatsby, the millionaire host of fashionable New York parties. However, while the wealthy classes will take advantage of his hospitality, those like Tom who have 'proper' breeding and inherited money will not tolerate his more serious efforts to enter their exclusive class.
To return to the original question--what makes Gatsby 'great' for Nick?--it is that he believes the myth of the American Dream. Nevertheless, it is only Nick (whose inherited wealth is on the decline and who identifies with Gatsby's desire to improve his social standing) who wants to believe that such a transformation as Gatsby's is possible. For the other characters like Daisy, Tom and the guests at Gatsby's parties, all men are certainly not created equal and there is no means by which the scales might subsequently be balanced. Even in America, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, society is strictly ordered, and for the elite to retain their exclusive position at the top of the hierarchy, those below them must also remain in their proper place.
Stocks, Claire. "'All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'." The English Review Feb. 2007: 9+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.